The last of the console makers is ready to sign up to AMD chips, according to the latest rumour

Some details are now coming to light on Nintendo's upcoming NX console. The console will be in the shops in a year's time, but we might know who's building the NX's chips.

AMD will manufacture the CPU + GPU combo, giving the outfit total control of the console market. It was pretty much a no brainer. AMD created the APUs found inside the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Although it is getting increasingly diffiuclt to tell the consoles appart.

AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, confirmed that the company had a new chip contract. Su said the deal could generate billions, but she did not identify the customer .

It now seems she was referring to the Nintendo deal, which means she is more optimistic about the products' success than us.

The NX will be based around the Android operating system and should released some time next year. Nintendo is saying nothing about the deal at the moment.

AMD is needs more deals like this if it is going to turn around its dependence on the ever-shrinking PC market. There are only so many consoles that made every year and AMD appears to be inside them all.

Nintendo reports that President Satoru Iwata has died at the age of 55 due to a bile duct tumour.

The executive missed E3 2014 due to health issues and had surgery to remove a growth later that year, but it's unfortunately clear that this wasn't enough to help him recover.

The company isn't saying much about succession, but it looks like Genyo Takeda and another company legend Shigeru Miyamoto will take over.

Iwata came to the company in 1983 and helped create some of the developer's legendary titles, such as EarthBound and the early Kirby series. He took charge of the firm's corporate planning in 2000, and in 2002 became the first person to lead Nintendo that wasn't part of the founding Yamauchi family.

As a President he did have a checkered career. He was in charge of the pretty pants GameCube and the struggling Wii U. However he was also in charge through the Wii's glory days and bought in motion-controlled gaming.

He was also behind Nintendo's dominance in dedicated handhelds through the DS and 3DS. Later he started a gradual adaptation to smartphone-dominated world with plans to develop mobile games.

For most people he was the company's face and no doubt that Nintendo will have problems finding someone who could be such a great image.

Nintendo has leaked the timeline of its 2016 launch of its next-generation games console and asked its supply chain partners to start pilot production in October.

The console will be manufactured by Foxconn with Pegatron trying to snatch some of the orders.

Component suppliers such as Macronix, PixArt Imaging, Coxon, Nishoku, Delta Electronics, Lingsen and Jentech, are also expected to land orders from Nintendo for the new console.

We already knew in March of Nintendo's plan to release Nintendo NX in 2016 and has started visiting its supply chain partners.

According to Digitimes, which has the inside trouser measurement of Nintendo, orders will be finalized in February or March 2016 and mass production will start in May or June 2016, while the console's official launch may take place around July.

Nintendo wants to ship 20 million Nintendo NX in the first year. This is ten times more than the shipment volume of ii U.

Nintendo has come out of the closet and allowed games to start featuring gay marriages.

The sword and spear-wielding warriors in the new instalment of Fire Emblem series will be able to marry whomever they like.

Recently the outfit was forced to apologise for excluding same-sex relationships in an earlier game. A life-simulation game, Tomodachi Life, did not allow same-sex marriage – much like Texas.

Fire Emblem Fates, which hit the Japanese market on Thursday, will roll out in the United States and Europe next year.

In the US we are expecting a storm of protest from the usual homophobe right wing ministers in the Bible belt. That is if Fox television can catch them while they are not visiting their rent boys. Concerned nut-job parents for Jesus would probably have something to say too, if such a lobby group existed.

It is unlikely to be a problem in civilised countries, but it is rather brave of Nintendo to take on the US right.

In a statement released this week, Kyoto-based Nintendo said the game, in which players advance through a fantasy world doing battle with other characters, will be inclusive.

"We can confirm that Fire Emblem Fates for Nintendo 3DS... includes the possibility for a same-sex marriage to take place between the main character created by the gamer and another character," it said.

"We believe that our gameplay experiences should reflect the diversity of the communities in which we operate."

Ironically Japan itself is behind the rest of the world when it comes to legalising same-sex marriage, there is no specific legal protection for gay people and the issue is not widely debated among the public.

The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn that Nintendo's new console will not only be the first to use a name unconnected to toilets, but will be powered by Android.

For a while now, people had been wondering what the next Wii would be called, with smart money being on the Number 2. However it seems that the new console dubbed the Nintendo NX has a few suprises under the bonnet.

According to Nikkei Nintendo is planning an Android console so that game developers would be able to port their games over with relative ease.

This could also indicate that games developed for the Nintendo NX could extend to other Android-powered devices like smartphones and tablets, play nice with the console.

Games developers have been ignoring the Wii U in droves so this might actually help Nintendo get back into the race.

Android-powered consoles have appeared before but they died horribly in the market place.

Computer gaming outfit Nintendo, whose toilet themed games consoles are flushing down the loo have thought it a natty idea to try and screw cash out of you-tube reviewers.

While some games companies are desperate for publicity, Nintendo is taking a dim view of reviewers who play the game and then post reviews and clips on YouTube.

It argues that since they make money, it should have a slice of the pie – in fact more than 40 per cent of it.."Let's Plays," and they're some of the most popular gaming-related videos on the internet and are seen as a major advert for Nintendo games.

We are not talking much dosh here a 1,000 views on a single video will generate around five dollars of ad revenue. Half of that goes to Google, and the rest goes to the creator.

Some reviewers who have millions of views, can make full-time income from sharing their hobbies with their fans.

Copyright claim

In 2013, Nintendo attempted to make sweeping copyright claims on videos on YouTube that included footage from their games. It demanded all the money that Lets Play creators made. Instead. It caused a significant backlash in the Let's Play community. Eventually, Nintendo dropped the claims.

However now the company's new initiative, unveiled in January, proposes to share the revenue for some videos.

YouTubers can apply to the Nintendo Creators Program and if an approved channel's video contains footage from a list of approved games, the revenue is split between the two parties – 40 per cent for Nintendo and 60 per cent for the creator.

If Nintendo chooses not to approve a video, then it can claim 100 per cent of the ad revenue, as it attempted to do in 2013. So far, it's not clear why some videos are approved and some are not. Cynics suggest that if you say something bad about a game then you could get it refused and all your add content goes to Google.

Since Google already claims 50 per cent of the total ad revenue generated by videos, the creator and Nintendo's share would be divvied up from the remaining 50 per cent.

Stuffing up your own business

To make matters worse Nintendo was flooded with applications. While they promised wait times of three business days for a reply, instead it turned into weeks without notice.

As a result the video makers are posting their content illegally or have given up. With business sense like that it is no wonder Nintendo is not doing as well as it used to.

So the new 3DS XL is coming, but if I want to transfer my files from my 3DS/2DS over to the new 3DS XL can I do that?

It turns out that the answer is "YES", but the process isn't exactly easy. In fact the requirement of a size 0 Phillips screwdrivers alone tips us off that this isn't going to be easy or quick.

In fact Nintendo has made a video do show you the entire process in depth. First off you will need to gather the required stuff necessary to complete the process. Here is a list of what you will need: Your current 3DS/2DS and its SD Card, A New Nintendo 3DS XL and A microSD card of equal or larger capacity (a 4GB one comes installed in the New 3DS XL), A size 0 Phillips screwdriver, A computer, An adapter to connect the SD and MicroSD cards to said computer, and Wireless broadband internet access.

While Nintendo admits that you can transfer your data across the wireless, they estimate that would take about 4 hours to do. So using the computer is the best way to get the transfer done the fastest, but it requires you go through about 14 steps to get it done. Apparently there is no simply way to make this happen any easier.

Nintendo's projection to move 12 million Wii U units has fallen short. The latest numbers bring the new lifetime sales for the console to only 9.2 million units ending December 31st of last year.

The release of Super Smash Bros Wii U and Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U have help make an impact on sales, but not as much as one could have hoped.

The problems for the Wii U are still the same and perhaps even getting a little worse. There just isn't enough compelling software coming out for the console and 3rd party developers have either moved on from the Wii U or have opted to slow down the number of releases planned for the Wii U.

As for the rumored talk of a new console in development, if there is something Nintendo is planning, they of course are not talking about it. We suspect that Nintendo is going to have to be pretty sure that they have support for their next console before they get close to releasing it. It is also going to have to have some innovation and some pretty solid software in order to catch some attention from those that are now trying to decide between the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

The maker of computer products which sound like toilet humour, Nintendo is flushing Brazil from its list of countries it suppliers.

Brazil's high tariffs on video game consoles have driven Nintendo out of the market and there will be no wiiing in that country.

Nintendo of America attributed the move to "high import duties that apply to our sector." Nintendo could avoid those duties by setting up a local manufacturing operation, but has chosen not to establish one because that costs too much.

Confusingly the company's distributor for Latin America would no longer send products to Brazil, but it would continue to distribute Nintendo goods in the region."Brazil is an important market for Nintendo and home to many passionate fans, but unfortunately, challenges in the local business environment have made our current distribution model in the country unsustainable," the company said.

"These challenges include high import duties that apply to our sector and our decision not to have a local manufacturing operation. We will continue to monitor the evolution of the business environment and evaluate how best to serve our Brazilian fans in the future."

Brazil also has some daft banking regulations which made digital purchases on the Wii U problematic.

Brazil's high tariffs on video games have driven up the price of the PlayStation 4 to $1,500, while an Xbox One, which Microsoft manufactures in Brazil "only" costs $800.

AMD has reportedly landed a deal to power Nintendo’s next generation console.

Although the Wii U is relatively fresh, the console has not made much of a dent on the market. It has failed to replicate the success of the original Wii and in many respects it is dead in the water compared to Sony and Microsoft offerings.

This means we could see a replacement sooner than expected.

Nintendo bids farewell to IBM?

According to Expreview, Nintendo is now looking to AMD for a new chip to power the next generation console. However, this is where it gets a bit vague.

AMD is already in the Wii U, but it merely provides the GPU, while the CPU cores come from IBM. In all likelihood AMD would have gotten the GPU business anyway, but Expreview reports that Nintendo has recognised the advantages of a custom chip approach and that it sees a common hardware architecture as “inevitable”.

It is unclear when the new console will launch. The Wii U was introduced in 2012, so it should still have a couple of years of life in it – but it’s not doing well and the launch could be pulled in.

AMD’s custom silicon approach

AMD has made it clear that it wants to diversify and lessen its dependence on the PC market. Custom processors for consoles and servers are just a part of the story.

AMD does not make a fortune on custom console silicon, but it does well nonetheless. The company has also made substantial gains in the professional graphics market, but its CPU business remains a problem, plagued by frequent delays and lack of design wins.

Expreview speculates that the new Nintendo console could appear in late 2016, which means AMD could be in a position to leverage Samsung’s and GloFo’s new FinFET node for the chip.